This blog post is inadvertently timely, as I discovered that in the UK, last Friday was National Plain English Day! Campaigners for plain English argue that information meant for the public should be clear and concise, and they want governments and companies to write their documents using simpler language. Legal language has unsurprisingly gotten caught up in the debate, as it’s notorious for its opacity. To give you an example of the changes campaigners would like to see, this is taken from the campaign website:
Before
High-quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process.
After
Children need good schools if they are to learn properly.
I’m a big believer in cutting to the chase. Whenever I read something akin to the “before” version, I always summarize it along the lines of the “after” version and complain to anyone who will listen about the unnecessary use of pointless and vague words. I’m a linguist, what can I say? 🙂
Before I began studying law, I had no idea just how convoluted and complicated legal writing was. During my degree course, it would take me ages to read anything (if I was planning on understanding what it said!). I would have to go through the sentence to the end, then back to the beginning, work out that part then sort of add in the middle parts until I could figure out what they were talking about! And occasionally I had to look up words – it was really like reading a foreign language sometimes.
Since that time, between reading academic journals and corporate policies, I feel I’ve been fairly bombarded with jargon, and I really don’t like it! So I should be a big fan of the Plain English Campaign, right?
Well, not so fast. I think plain English is great for governments, corporations and academia, but my law studies showed me that it’s not that simple when it comes to legal language. I’ve read a lot of opinions from people in the translation profession recommending that legal documents be translated into plain English. I’ve even heard the justification that Spanish/French/Italian/German legal documents use such long-winded and archaic language, that it is just nonsensical to transfer that into English, which prefers much simpler language. I have to wonder how many English legal documents that person has read! The thing is, legal writers take great pains to be precise, and that requires a) the use of slightly long-winded explanations, and b) verbatim transfer of terms used in previous case law and statutes (even if that judgment or statute was written in 1859), so that everyone interpreting the law is clear as to what is meant. Okay, maybe clear isn’t the best word, but the use of consistent terminology makes it much easier to know exactly what is meant and what decision should be made.
So, I do agree that documents meant to be read by the public regarding their legal rights and obligations should be written in plain English to the extent possible. This is becoming more and more the case with original English documents thanks to the Plain English Campaign, and recently Obama’s Plain Writing Act. And this may be where the translator’s comments mentioned above come in, as other countries’ official documents are generally more opaque than English ones. But documents for lawyers and judges need to be extremely precise, and consistent with previous documents on the matter at hand. Because different legal systems are involved, it’s even more important that translations provide the closest equivalents to the original terms, so that the most accurate meaning is conveyed to the reader.
So I believe that where an English translation is being produced for use by a judge or a lawyer, it should be translated using traditional legal language, even if the resulting document is difficult for the layperson to understand.
What do you think? Should legal documents be written in plain English? Legal translators, what type of language do you use in your translations? Let us know in the comments.
A very interesting post Katherine which has made me think about something I do from instinct. I translate from French to English and aim to reproduce every point in the English but in a less flowery way than the French. My legal translations are certainly “heavier” and more wordy than my creative translations and I would never adapt a sentence like your “before” and “after” examples in a legal text, which is the point you are making.
Hi Alison, thanks for your comment!
Yes, as I mentioned I’m often tempted to summarize legal sentences a la the plain English campaign, but many of those “little, unimportant” words do matter when it comes to legal issues. In fact, even though I said I agreed with plain English translations for public documents, I still don’t think as translators we can go as far as the example given in simplifying, as that seems closer to an adaptation than a translation. Though I guess it depends on the purpose of the translation.
Hi Katherine, thanks for this post – it’s an interesting topic.
Einstein said that “Everything should be as simple as possible, *but not simpler*”, which isn’t a bad rule to follow here, I reckon.
I certainly wouldn’t dare to follow the extreme example you cite from the PE website, which distorts the original quite a lot. (Although it may be fine in the context if re-writing the whole thing from scratch and that was actually what was originally intended.)
However, I think there is often scope to trim the fat a little, without necessarily losing any meat. Looking at the above example, I can’t see much wrong with something like: “Good learning environments are essential to facilitate and improve education.”
Likewise, most of the time I can’t see any harm is swapping out redundant and confusing legalisms like “in the case that” in favour of “if”, or “not less than” in favour of “at least”.
As long as the exact meaning (warts, ambiguities and all) of the original is conveyed, then it’s purely a matter of preference — provided you’re not charging on target words, that is.
Hi David,
That’s a good quote to bear in mind! Yes, I was thinking more along the lines of your suggested solution to the example given too, the campaign’s example is quite drastic, although as you say, depending on the context, it could be fair enough.
Good point that there are *some* “little” words in legal documents that could be made simpler without loss of meaning.
One of the things I need to improve is my knowledge of the Spanish legal system, as my current knowledge level allows doubt to creep in when I’m deciding if a word is material or not, leading to translations that are probably more cumbersome than necessary.